


T'was the Night Before Christmas

by Jacqueline Albright-Beckett (xaandria)



Series: Give Me _____ [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Destiel Secret Santa, First Christmas, M/M, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 21:17:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2888231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaandria/pseuds/Jacqueline%20Albright-Beckett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surgical tech Dean and vascular surgeon Cas share their first Christmas -- but they've only been together a handful of days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	T'was the Night Before Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> _Takes place between the chapters "God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "What Comes Next" in the parent story "What I Need."_

Saturday, if Dean or Cas had felt it necessary to venture out into it once breakfast had been obtained, proved to be a cold and wet affair. Noises were made about going out for lunch, and then dinner, and then drinks, but neither of them seemed driven enough by the prospect to rouse themselves from the various positions in which they had intertwined with each other. And so, in the lethargic ecstasy of new intimate companionship, Saturday wound around the clock into Sunday, which was no less wet or cold and prolonged their disinclination to leave the warmth and comfort of their rather nomadic entanglements: upon the couch watching a Die Hard marathon, in the kitchen as Dean valiantly attempted to prove his culinary prowess by making soup from what he could find in Cas’s cupboards, or in Cas’s bed doing the obvious.

Sunday became late Sunday, as Sunday is wont to do, and unfortunately the surgeon and his tech were forced to surface for a brief moment from the depths of their mutual domestic and sensual discoveries to face the demands the next day would bring.

"I’m taking three shifts of call," Dean said, not precisely thrilled. He kicked at the sheets in an attempt to untwist them, which failed miserably and forced him to sit up to undo the mess he’d made. "Since Summit is closed. I mean, the call is time-and-a-half on Christmas Eve, so it’s not like it’s nothing, but…"

"But it’s still thirty-six hours of call," Cas finished. He rubbed at his face and pulled Dean back down to the pillows. "Do you have to be there for it?"

"I already told them I’d hang out in the call room," Dean replied apologetically. "I thought I’d be all alone with Sam and Jess gone." Inwardly, he groaned. Thirty-six hours of cooling his heels in a hospital lounge, with breaks for naps in a tiny room with a hospital mattress and linens, sounded even less appealing now than it had when he’d taken up the offer.

"At least you get paid for it," Cas pointed out. "When I did straight weeks of call as a resident, it was all salary." He shook his head. "I’m pretty sure that was when I switched from cardiovascular to peripheral. Fewer middle-of-the-night emergencies."

"They’re probably not even going to need me," Dean groused. "I could probably get someone else to take my call…." He left the sentence hanging.

"I have clinic," Cas said, apparently picking up Dean’s hint. "Still seeing patients until four on Christmas Eve."

"Who schedules appointments at four in the afternoon the day before Christmas?" The sheets, cold from their time heaped at the bottom of the bed where they wouldn’t be in the way, were beginning to warm up with their combined body heat. Though they’d been doing practically nothing all weekend, weariness began to tug at the edge of Dean’s consciousness, and Cas pulling Dean against him did not help matters. "Can you drop me off at my house tomorrow around five?" he asked.

"Yeah." Cas paused. "Will you be here Christmas Eve?"

"If you want me here," Dean replied.

"I want you here."

"Then I’ll be here."

 

* * *

 

 

Dean’s personality was not suited for traffic jams.

"Come on!" he shouted at the river of red brake lights that stretched before him. "It’s not even rush hour!" The muddle in front of him did not listen, and he sat back in frustration. The reflex of pulling his phone from his pocket warred with the knowledge that it had been dead for nineteen hours, its forgotten charging cable sitting nicely coiled on the kitchen counter so he wouldn’t forget it for his extended stay at St. Luke’s. That he would have to get home and charge his phone enough to use the maps to get to Cas’s apartment added yet another layer of torment to his already thinly-worn patience, and no amount of angry guitar at full volume was going to appease it.

He needed a shower. His back ached from bending over a table that had been down low enough for the short surgeon to operate comfortably. The corners of his eyes somehow felt gummy and sandy at the same time from lack of proper sleep. The clock flipped over to 8:00, signifying his forty minutes and fifty feet he’d driven, and Dean very clearly and carefully enunciated every epithet in his vocabulary.

He did not roll past the jackknifed semi until close to 8:35, and was not home and jamming the charger into his phone until 8:50. The shower felt like the ecstatic tears of some benevolent goddess as Dean stood under the spray, and as he luxuriated in the heat of water he did not have to save for two more housemates, he tried to decide how much he really wanted to go to Cas’s.

Part of him — most of him, really — was astonished and slightly offended that he had to consider the question at all. Of course he wanted to go. He’d felt something akin to withdrawal ever since he’d watched the surgeon drive away into the sleet of Monday morning, and upon discovering that his phone had died Monday evening had become progressively more morose, even though he likely wouldn’t have called or texted anyway. They’d just spent more than fifty consecutive hours together: Dean was many things, but clingy was not one of them. Or at least the desire to not appear to be clingy was what drove the self-control that Dean liked to imagine he would have had, if his phone had not been dead.

And then there was the question of what exactly they intended with it all, which Dean was forced to admit was the real motivation behind any reluctance whatsoever. They’d determined they weren’t playing games, but the leap between “not playing games” and “dating” was a very large one.

Were they dating?

Were they officially dating or secretly dating?

Were they somewhere on a continuum that would lead to dating, but not there yet?

Hell, did it even matter?

 

* * *

 

 

It was five minutes until ten when Dean knocked on Cas’s door. The box he held had been wrapped haphazardly with newspaper, because he didn’t know where Jess had hidden the wrapping paper, and he was not at all certain that what the box contained was even an appropriate gift for the new relationship status of “surgeon he wasn’t quite dating but of whom he had detailed carnal knowledge.” But then, he supposed, he hadn’t been sure if it was an appropriate gift for “surgeon he privately pined over and would never approach in that manner” when he’d bought it, either.

He wondered if Cas was taking so long to answer the door to avoid appearing too eager, as though he’d been waiting.

Dean knocked again, hoping that he had let enough time lapse so as to avoid looking too eager himself.

He contemplated knocking again when the door was yanked open and Dean was surprised to find that all the tension of the previous two days on call, the traffic jam, and his internal uncertainty melted away at Cas’s beaming grin.

 

* * *

 

 

"You didn’t have to get me anything."

There was no tree, no blinking lights, not even the smell of evergreen boughs, but A Christmas Story was playing, muted, on the television, which Dean decided was Christmassy enough. “I know I didn’t. But I did anyway. I, uh, got it a little while back.”

Cas nodded, turning the box over in his hands. “I didn’t know how to get you anything without it seeming like I was playing favorites, but then this weekend we…complicated things.” He beckoned at the coffee table, upon which sat another box — this one very neatly wrapped, emerald green paper with silver and white ribbons, and somehow Dean knew that the surgeon had not wrapped it himself; this was expert table-in-the-corner-of-the-bookstore work. “So I cheated. Because I do have a favorite.”

Dean smirked. “It’s only two hours until Christmas,” he said. “Do we wait until midnight, or open them now?”

In answer, Cas grinned and ripped at the newspaper, and with an answering smile Dean reached over to pluck the box from the table.

They completed the unwrapping nearly simultaneously, expressions of disbelief and then deep amusement identical as they looked up at one another. “No,” Dean said, holding up the ceramic travel mug. “We didn’t.”

"Apparently, we did," Cas said, voice wavering with suppressed laughter as he turned over the exact same mug in his hands.

"I can’t believe this."

"Me neither." Cas chuckled. "You’d think we’d been dating for years already."

Dean blinked, stomach dropping slightly. “Are we?” he asked bluntly.

Cas cocked his head to one side. “Are we what?”

"Dating."

Cas coughed. “It’s…I mean, it’s a bit early to tell, but…I kind of figured that’s where we’re going to end up.” He delivered this to the mug in his hands, glancing up only at the end.

Dean had to swallow against an enormous warmth that blossomed behind his ribs, threatening to turn his smile into an embarrassingly goofy grin. “Good. I read you right.”

"Dean," Cas said seriously, "if there is one thing you’ve always been able to do, it’s been to read me right."

The language made it seem as though their relationship spanned back much further than the weekend’s tryst, drawing from the months of tentative friendship and hesitant overtures, and in that dizzying instant of comfortable assumption of timelessness, Dean felt that bond shoot forward into the indeterminable future, as well. The cool ceramic in his hands was the only thing that grounded him as he understood down to the marrow of his bones that  _holy shit, this was it._

And then that certainty fled as quickly as it had come, leaving him with only the vague memory of what it had felt like to look at the man across from him and know that he would be there next Christmas Eve, and the next, and the next, stretching ahead of them through infinite calendars.

"Dean?"

Dean shook his head and blinked. “Sorry. Spaced out there for a moment.” He smiled, but it felt thin. “Tired,” he offered as an explanation.

Cas nodded. “Let’s go to bed.”

 

* * *

 

 

They did — go to bed, that was. In some wordless understanding, they knew they had time later for more amorous pursuits. This wasn’t a fleeting thing they had to pursue at that very moment. And so they settled into their pillows, breathing growing slow and regular, and they slept.

T’was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring — not even a mouse.


End file.
